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SAMUEL SLATER 



AND THE 



EARLY DEVELOPMENT 



OF THE 



COTTON MANUFACTITRE 



IN THE 



UNITED STATES. 



WILLIAM R. BAGNALL, M. A. 




:mjl=dletown, conn. : 



COPYRIGHT, 1890, 
By William R. Bagnall. 



J. S. Stewart, Printer and Bookbinder. 



r^ 





z ^^ 



PREFACE. 



It has been suggested, in view of the fact that the 
writer has been engaged for several years in research and 
in |he study of records and other sources of information, 
with a view to the publication, at an early date, of a 
history of the Textile Industries of the United States from 
the earliest colonial period to the present time, that he 
should prepare a sketch of the early introduction and 
development of the Cotton Manufacture, to be published 
in connection with the Cotton Centenary Celebra- 
tion, to be held at Pawtucket, R. I., September 29- 
October 4. 

In doing so, I have thought that it would be of interest, 
and pertinent to the purpose of the sketch, that some of 
the more important facts of the history of cotton in its 
cultivation and manufacture, and of those inventions 
which have made its successful development in Great 
Britain and the United States possible, should be pre- 
sented. 

I have given, in addition to a full record of the life of 
Samuel Slater, whose relation to that early development 
secured for him, worthily, the title of the " Father of the 
American Cotton Manufacture," some biographi'cal notes 



(oiKcrning those })receding him, to whose inveiUi\e skill 
\\ as due the invention oi' the machines which lie introduced 
into this country, or to whose personal inlluence over him 
in youth he owed his preparation for his honorable and 
/successful career, and of those with whom he was associ- 
ated, on coming to this country, and whose enterprise, 
courage and patience, as well as their financial support, in 
the days of early difficulty and doubt, contributed much 
to the triumph over obstacles and to final success. 

I have also thought that it would be proper, and indeed 
necessary to its completeness, to continue the narrative 
down to the time when the cotton manufacture of New^ 
England, prosperous for several years, but, soon after the 
close of the war with Great Britain, prostrated and 
apparently on the verge of destruction, was saved and 
placed on a basis of permanency and of prosperity which 
has continued to the present time, interrupted only for 
brief periods by the financial revulsions which have 
affected all the business interests, mercantile as well as 
industrial, of the whole country. 

William R. Bagnall. 

Middletown^ Conn.^ September, i8go. 



SAMUEL SLATER 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 



The cotton plant, of which there are several varieties, 
is indigenous to .large sections of Asia, Africa, and 
America, and has been used from a very early period 
by the natives of those sections in the manufacture of 
their clothing. The earliest records of its manufac- 
ture assign its origin to India, and at a date prior to 
authentic profane history. It is " mentioned in the 
sacred writings, of the Hindoos, written a thousand 
years before the Christian Era. Herodotus, 445 B. C, 
wrote that '' cotton was the customary wear of the 
inhabitants of India." Strabo, 54 B. C, mentions its 
cultivation and manufacture in Persia. Pliny, A. D. 
70, speaks both of the cultivation and manufacture as 
being carried on in Egypt. Cotton fabrics are first 
referred to, as an article of commerce, about the 
beginning of the Christian Era, and it is a remark- 
able fact that a writer of the 2d century, Arrian, A. 



6 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

D. 124, speaks of the perfection to which, with rude 
apparatus, the fabrication of cotton cloth was brought. 
The '* webs of woven air," as he styles the finest text- 
ures, are still made, according to modern travelers, in 
the same districts with machines nearly identical with 
those used two thousand years ago, the product being 
of the same marvelous delicacy and beauty, not sur- 
passed, rarely equaled, by all the appliances of modern 
invention. These wonderful fabrics illustrate the say- 
ing of a Hindoo writer, that '' the first, the best, and 
the most perfect of instruments is the human hand." 
A modern historian has well said that '' modern ma- 
chinery has rather served to multiply the power of 
production than to excel the native cunning of that 
divinely contrived machine." 
V The manufacture of cotton fabrics was first intro- 
duced into Europe by the Moors, who brought it into 
Spain in the loth century, and Barcelona soon became 
celebrated for the amount and the excellent quality of 
the cotton fabrics made there. The manufacture com- 
menced in Italy in the 14th century, fustians and 
dimities being made in Venice and Milan with a linen 
warp and cotton filling, as, in the last century, in Eng- 
land and this country. About the same period the 
manufacture was introduced into France and Flan- 
ders. 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 7 

The earliest reference to the use of cotton in Eng- 
land is in the records of Bolton Abbey, in 1298, in 
which it is spoken of as being twisted for candle-wick- 
ing, the raw material for this purpose being imported 
largely from the Levant, about 1430. There is, how- 
ever, no authentic reference to its use in the manufac- 
ture of cloth in England for nearly two centuries 
afterwards. The first reference to it is contained in 
the following extract from a little work by Lewis 
Roberts, published in 1641, entitled '* Treasure of 
Traffic": — ** The town of Manchester, in Lancashire, 
must be also herein remembered and worthily for 
their encouragement commended, for they buy cotton 
wool in London that comes first from Cyprus and 
Smyrna, and at home worke the same, and perfect it 
into fustians, vermillions, dimities, and such other 
stuffs, and return it to London, where the same is 
vented and sold, and not seldom sent into forrain 
parts." Edward Baines, in his " History of the Cot- 
ton Manufacture of Great Britain," expresses the 
opinion "that the manufacture of cotton had obscurely 
commenced, and had been insensibly and slowly 
growing up for some time before its distinct recog- 
nition in the work of Roberts." Thomas Fuller, in 
his ''Worthies of England," written in 1662, speaks 
of Manchester as " The seat for some time past of the 



8 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

cotton manufacture," and of Bolton in the same 
county as *' The chief market for fustians, which 
were in ahiiost general use throughout the nation." 
There is no doubt that the manufacture had been 
commenced in other manufacturing districts of Eng- 
land early in the 17th century, as the woolen manu- 
facturers of Rowley, Mass., who came from Yorkshire 
in 1639, appear to have been expert in it. In the 
Journal of Governor Winthrop is the following para- 
graph, under date of June 12, 1643 • — ''Our supplies 
from England failing very much, men began to look 
about them and fell to the manufacturing of cotton, 
w^hereof we had a store from Barbados, and of hemp 
and flax, wherein Rowley, to their great commenda- 
tion, exceeded all other towns." This without ques- 
tion was the first manufacture of cotton in this 
country, and was nearly contemporaneous with its 
first mention by Roberts in England. 

We have said that the cotton plant w^as indigenous 
to this continent. Columbus found it growing wild in 
Hispaniola, and other West India Islands, and at the 
time of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, Central 
America, and the northern portions of South America, 
cotton cloth constituted the principal clothing of the 
natives. With even ruder implements than those of 
the Hindoos, the natives of Mexico and Peru spun 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 9 

and wove textures little inferior in fineness and beauty 
to the product of oriental looms, and the Spanish 
historian, Antonio de Herrera, said of the Nicaraguan 
women that ^' they spun as fine as hair." 

There are some reasons to believe that the cotton 
plant grew wild within the territory now included in 
the present Southern States. Among the natural 
commodities, enumerated in a small tract entitled '' A 
Declaration of the State of Virginia, 1620," were " cot- 
ton wool and sugar canes, all of which may there also 
be had in abundance with an infinity of othermore." 
George Bancroft, however, in his '' History of the 
United States "(Vol. I., p. 179, anno i62i)^says: — '*The 
first cultivation of cotton in the United States deserves 
commemoration. This year the seeds were planted 
as an experiment, and their plentiful coming up was, 
at that early day, a subject of interest in America and 
England." This would indicate that the early growth 
in Virginia was not spontaneous, resulting rather from 
the planting of the seed. That the cultivation was 
not carried on to any notable extent we have the au- 
thority of Dr. George Emerson, of Philadelphia, who 
in 1862 published a w^ork entitled " Cotton in the 
Middle States." He says: — ''Long before the 
Southern States took up its regular culture cotton 
was raised on the Eastern shore of Maryland, in the 



lo sAMiia, sLAri':K and 

lower C(nintics of Delaware, and other places in the 
Middle States. As early as 1736, and for some time 
after, it was chiefly regarded as an ornamental plant, 
and confined to gardens ; but it soon became appre- 
ciated for its useful qualities and was brought under 
regular cultivation." It would appear from this that 
the first cultivation of cotton in the United States, 
worthy of notice, was made on the peninsula between 
the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, from whence it 
crossed into Western Maryland and Virginia and so 
w^ent southward. 

That its first cultivation in South Carolina and 
Georgia was not earlier than 1788 is indicated by the 
following extract from a letter of Richard Teake, 
dated Savannah, Dec, 1 1, 1788, and quoted by Tench 
Coxe, to whom the cotton manufacture of this coun- 
try owes more than to any other of its early states- 
men or public m.en. '' I have been this year an ad- 
venturer, and the first that has attempted on a large 
scale, in the article of cotton. Several here, as well 
as in Carolina, have followed me and tried the experi- 
ment." Its cultivation in the Sea Islands was the 
result of an accident. A planter there, early in the 
year 1786, received a large quantity of various seeds 
from Jamaica, of which was some Pernambuco cotton- 
seed, contained in three sacks, of which he made no 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 11 

Use at that time. In a letter to a friend in 1789 he 
said: — " Being in want of the sacks for gathering in 
my provisions, I shook their contents on the dung- 
hill ; and, it happening to be a very wet season, in the 
Spring multitudes of plants covered the place. These 
I drew out and transplanted them into two acres of 
ground, and was highly gratified to find an abundant 
crop. This encouraged me to plant more. I used all 
my strength in cleaning and planting, and have suc- 
ceeded beyond my most sanguine expectations." 

Through the zealous advocacy of Tench Coxe, who 
has been styled '' The father of the cotton culture in 
the United States," very many planters in the two 
Carolinas and in Georgia engaged in the culture. 
The difficulty of cleaning the cotton of its seed was a 
serious impediment to the development of the busi- 
ness, which was removed by the invention, in 1793, of 
the saw-gin by Eli Whitney, patented March 14, 1794, 
which gave an immense impulse to the cultivation 
and '' conferred on the plantation-states a benefit that 
can scarcely be estimated in money." It enabled the 
planter to clean for market, by the labor of one man, 
a thousand pounds of cotton in the place of five or 
six pounds which he could clean by the hand. The 
culture soon became general in the above-named 
States. 



\2 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

It has been stated that En^^hmd was far behind its 
sister nations of Western and Southern Europe in the 
estabHshment of the Cotton Manufacture. But within 
less than a century after the first record of any Eng- 
Hsh cotton industry, was commenced that remarkable 
series of inventions which substituted, for hand-labor, 
machines for the manufacture of cotton yarns, the 
main principles of w^hich, notwithstanding the great 
improvements of the present century, characterize the 
cotton machinery of the present day and are essential 
to its effective operation. To these inventions has 
been due the precedence of Great Britain above all 
countries of the earth as the home of the Cotton Man- 
ufacture. 

The first invention in order of time of historical im- 
portance was that of a device rather than a machine, 
viz.: that of the fly-shuttle, patented May 26, 1733, 
by John Kay, a native of Bury, Lancashire, but re- 
siding in Colchester, in the same county. A specifi- 
cation of this patent describes the operation of the fly- 
shuttle in these w^ords-: — " The w^eaver sits in the 
middle of the loom and pulls a small cord, which casts 
the shuttle from side to side, at pleasure. The cloth 
is more even than it is where the layer is pulled by 
two men, one at each end of the loom." The fly- 
shuttle was used, at first, wholly by woolen weavers, 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 1 3 

whose cloth was usually so wide as to require one 
person on each side of the loom, to throw the shuttle, 
but it was used very little by weavers of cotton until 
1760, when the son of the inventor, Robert Kay, in- 
vented the drop-box, by means of which filling of dif- 
ferent colors could be used with the fly-shuttle. 

The earliest patent for spinning by machinery, for 
an invention made some years earlier by John Wyatt, 
of Litchfield, was granted in the name of Lewis Paul, 
June 24, 1738, and it deserves particular notice for 
various reasons. In the first place it describes accu- 
rately the process of roller-spinning. Second, this 
feature of the patent was not put into successful opera- 
tion until more than thirty years later, when Ark- 
wright took his first patent. Third, because the ex- 
istence of this patent, or, at least, of its first specifica- 
tion, if not entirely unknown at the time of the trials 
on the validity of Arkwright's patents, in 1781 and 
1785, was not mentioned; and, even as late as 1827, 
in an article in the Edinburgh Review for June of 
that year, presenting an elaborate argument in favor 
of the claims of Arkwright, as disputed by Richard 
Guest, there is no reference to it. 

The patent claims three methods of operation. The 
first is described as follows : — '' The wool or cotton 
being prepared, one end of the roving is put between 



14 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

a pair of rollers, which by their motion draw in the 
cotton to be spun, and a succession of other rollers, 
moving proportionately faster than the fir'st, draw the 
roving into any degree of fineness which may be re- 
quired.^' The second process, as described, is quite 
unintelligible without drawings. The third process is 
described as follows: — ''In some other cases only 
the first pair of rollers is used, and then the bobbins, 
on which the yarn is spun, are so contrived as to draw 
faster than the rollers give, and in such proportion as 
the first sliver is proposed to be diminished." 

Though the first process coincides with Ark- 
wright's roller-spinning, it does not appear to have 
been put in operation even by the inventor. The 
third process only was used, as is evident from the 
letter of Charles Wyatt, the son of the inventor, 
quoted by Bains, in which is the following sentence : 
'' The wool had been carded in the common way, 
and was placed between two cylinders, from whence 
the bobbins drew it by means of the twist." Also, a 
patent, granted for an improvement, June 29, 1758, 
after describing the preparation of the roving says : — 
'' Which, being put between a pair of rollers, is by 
their turning around delivered to the nose of the 
spindle, in such proportion to the thread made, as 
is proper for the particular occasion. The spindle is 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 1 5 

SO contrived as to draw faster than the rollers 
give." From this it plainly appears that the exten- 
sion of the roving to produce the yarn was not effected 
by the different speed of successive pairs of rollers, 
but by the draught between the rollers and the spin- 
dles, somewhat like the drawing of the roving, while 
receiving the twist, on the Spinning Jenny or the one 
thread wheel. 

Two cotton mills were built to operate machinery 
under this patent, one at Birmingham in 1741 or 
1742, the machinery in it being turned by two asses 
walking around an axis. This mill was operated but 
a short time, probably less than a year. A mill upon 
a larger scale, and running by water power, was estab- 
lished at Northampton, the machinery having two 
hundred and fifty spindles, but, like the former, it was 
not successful. 

It may seem very strange that so long a period 
elapsed after the invention, by Wyatt, of the true 
process of roller spinning, before it was put in opera- 
tion by Arkwright in 1769, notwithstanding the 
alleged attempt to construct machinery on this prin- 
ciple by Thomas Highs. There are reasons to be- 
lieve that other experiments were made with a view 
to the construction of an effective spinning machine, 
of which the only one, which came into use to any ex- 



l6 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

tent, was invented about 1767, and patented June 12, 
1770, by James Hargreaves, a weaver in Stand-hill, 
near Blackburn, Lancashire. He gave it the name 
by which, together with similar machines constructed 
by other persons, it was known for many years, the 
*' Spinning Jenny," from the name of a favorite 
daughter. It was little else than the union of a 
number of spindles, operating together in the same 
machine, by extending and twisting the thread in the 
same manner as on a one thread spinning wheel. 

A patent for a carding machine was granted, August 
30, 1748, to Lewis Paul. A specification in the patent 
describes the use of a card-cylinder, operating upon 
cards placed beneath, the cotton being taken from it 
by hand. Important improvements in the carding 
machine were made in 1772 by John Lees, who 
invented the feeder, and by James Hargreaves, who 
invented the crank and comb for taking the cotton 
from the cards, and, in 1774, by Thomas Wood, who 
obtained what was called perpetual or endless card- 
ing by fastening the cards on the cylinder spirally 
instead of longitudinally. 

In 1767, or perhaps a year or two earlier, Richard 
Arkwright began the experiments which resulted in 
his great invention. He was born in Preston, in Lan- 
cashire, England, December 23, 1732, and was bred 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. I 7 

to the trade of a barber, and worked at it for some 
years in his native town. About 1760 he estabhshed 
himself in BoIton-le-Moors, where he engaged in the 
business of an itinerant hair-merchant ; and, having 
discovered a valuable chemical process for dyeing 
hair, he was able to amass some property. Residing 
in a district where considerable manufacture was 
carried on of cloths, either wholly linen or mixed cot- 
ton and linen, he had ample opportunity to become 
acquainted with the processes of manufacture then in 
use. Being naturally sagacious and enterprising, his 
attention was drawn to the mode of spinning 
used in that region. It is said that the first hint of 
his invention was derived from seeing a bar of red hot 
iron elongated by being drawn between two pairs of 
rollers, the second pair moving faster than the first. 
The precise time of his beginning his experiments is 
not known. It was probably about the same time 
that Hargreaves was engaged in the construction of 
his first Spinning Jenny, Not being a practical me- 
chanic, he employed John Kay, a watchmaker of a 
neighboring town, to construct the several parts of 
his machine. 

The essential feature of Arkwright's invention was 
the use of successive pairs of rollers, one end of the 
roving being put between one pair of rollers which, 



I 8 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

by their motion, drew in the cotton, to which a twist 
also was given and which passed to a second pair of 
rollers, moving proportionally faster than the first, 
and drawing the yarn to any required degree of fine- 
ness. It was claimed in the final trial in 1785, to test 
the validity of the Arkwright patent, that Thomas 
Highs, a reed-maker of Leigh, in Lancashire, con- 
ceived the idea of spinning by rollers and that he em- 
ployed John Kay to make the model of a machine. It 
was also claimed that Arkwright in his experiments 
received information from. John Kay, concerning this 
model. This alleged fact was not only the basis of 
the suit, in 1785, for making the patent void, but was 
the reason of a decided conflict of opinion in England 
as to the real relation of Arkwright to the invention 
which was the beginning of a new era in the cotton 
manufacture. If it is true that Thomas Highs made 
certain experiments, and had a model of a machine 
prepared, and that Arkwright was informed concern- 
ing them, which the latter always denied, he was cer- 
tainly able to mature the invention and to put it into 
successful operation, which was not done by Highs. 
There have been numerous improvements in ma- 
chinery, the result of successive experiments and fail- 
ures, until some one, who has had the skill and per- 
severance to remedy the defects, has succeeded in 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 1 9 

perfecting the invention. This remark is applicable 
to another claim which has been made for the same 
Thomas Highs, viz. : that of priority of invention of 
the Spinning Jenny, perfected and patented by Har- 
greaves. 

Having brought his invention to such a state as 
seemed to warrant the erection of a mill, Arkwright 
removed in 1768 to Nottingham, where, with capital 
furnished in part by the Messrs. Wright, bankers of 
that place, he erected his first mill. Nottingham' was 
then, as it has continued to be, a principal center of 
the hosiery trade, and was doubtless selected by Ark- 
wright as the first location of his proposed industry, 
because it would probably afford a market for his 
yarns. The same fact probably induced Hargreaves, 
also in 1768, when compelled to fly from Lancashire 
by a combination of hand-wheel spinners, who en- 
tered his house and destroyed his first machine, to go 
to Nottingham, where he built his second machine, 
only of eight spindles, w^hich he operated in secret, 
turning it by hand, spinning yarn for the hosiers. 

In 1769, on the 3d of July, Arkwright received his 
first patent. His operations at Nottingham were 
greatly embarrassed, at first, by the want of adequate 
capital. The mill was operated by horses, there being 
at that place no water-power ; and for some two years 



20 SAMUKL SLATER AND 

the progress in working out the invention was not 
satisfactory to Arkwright or his friends, the bankers. 
On their advice he applied to Jedediah Strutt, of 
Derby, a gentleman who had been engaged for some 
years in manufacturing hosiery in Derby, in which 
industry he had acquired large wealth. He was also 
a man of superior mechanical ability, having invented 
and patented machines of much importance to the 
hosiery manufacture. As a large consumer of cotton 
yarns, he \vas disposed to consider carefully, and, as 
a mechanic, he could appreciate the merits of Ark- 
w^right's spinning frame. Being satisfied that the 
invention w^as of extraordinary importance, he, with 
iiis partner, Samuel Need, in 1 77 1, entered into part- 
nership with Richard Arkwright. Ample capital was 
now provided, and the combined ingenuity and skill 
of Arkwright and Strutt soon removed all mechanical 
difficulties. In the same year, 1771, a mill, much 
larger than that in Nottingham, was erected at Crom- 
ford, about fourteen miles north-w^est of Derby. 
There was an excellent water power at that place, and 
the business, then transferred from Nottingham, soon 
became very profitable. 

Till the year 1773 the principal, almost the only, 
market for the yarns, made at Cromford, was to supply 
the hosiery industry, and chiefly at Derby and Not- 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 21 

tingham. The cotton weavers of Lancashire com- 
bined against its use, partly from prejudice in favor of 
hand-spinners and their yarns, and partly on account 
of their own supposed adverse interests. Till this time 
linen yarns had been used for the warps of calicoes, as 
plain, unprinted cotton cloth was called in England, 
and of other fabrics which were called cotton, though 
only the weft or filling was of that fiber. It was not 
possible to make, on the hand-wheel or the Spinning 
Jenny, yarns of sufficient firmness and strength to 
resist the pull and friction of the loom in weaving. 
Mr. Strutt had observed that, on the Arkwright 
Spinning Frame, the yarn could be spun with a 
harder twist sb as to be much stronger than the 
ordinary product of the hand-wheel or the Spinning 
Jenny, and he at once suggested to his partner in the 
business at Derby, Samuel Need, the possibility and 
advantage of weaving calicoes with both warp and 
weft of cotton yarns. An experiment being made, a 
fabric was produced at less cost and more suitable for 
many purposes than the calico having a linen warp. 
The year 1773 may therefore be considered the time 
of the introduction, and Jedediah Strutt the author, of 
the improved method of manufacture which gave to 
England and this country cotton cloth properly so 
called, that is, cloth having both warp and weft of that 



JJ SAML'KL SLATKR AND 

fiber. Messrs. Need and Strutt at once engaged in 
tlie manufacture of calicoes, placing the machinery for 
weaving in a mill, erected by them at Derby, which is 
said to have been the first fire-proof mill ever erected, 
having brick walls on brick arches. 

A second patent was granted to Richard Ark- 
wright, December i6, 1775, for additional inventions, 
and covering machines for carding, drawing, and 
roving, as well as the final operation of spinning. 
The drawing and roving frames, covered by the patent 
of 1775, were constructed on the same principles as 
the spinning frame of 1769. They were modifica- 
tions of that machine, but the processes, which they 
were made to perform, were indispensable to the per- 
fection of the yarn. There is no record of drawing or 
of any operation, between the carding and the spin- 
ning, provided for by any machine prior to the inven- 
tions of Arkwright, and the introduction of the draw- 
ing and roving machines was an important element in 
his success. The carding-machine, covered by the 
patent of 1775, embraced the principles of the inven- 
tion to which we have referred, — those of Lees, Har- 
greaves, and Wood. It was claimed by Arkwright 
that these improvements in carding machinery had, 
each of them, been put into use by him before they 
were announced or claimed by the persons named. 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 23 

They were certainly covered by his patent of 1775, 
which, with the previous one of 1769, covered what 
has since been known as the Arkwright System of 
Cotton Machinery, put into successful operation in 
Pawtucket by Samuel Slater, one hundred years ago. 

The feature in Arkwright's Spinning Frame, to 
which we have referred as having made possible the 
substitution of cotton yarns for linen yarns in the 
warps of all grades of cotton cloth, was a reason , 
that yarns made on it should not be as well adapted 
for weft or filling, and on that account the Spin- 
ning Jenny continued to be used, for several years, to 
furnish yarns for the latter purpose, especially those 
of the finer numbers and where a soft and pliable 
fabric was desired. This fact led to the invention of 
another machine, only second in its importance to the 
Arkwright Spinning Frame, and which, like the latter 
machine, has continued in its essential principles to 
the present time. This machine was the Mule of 
Samuel Crompton. 

Samuel Crompton was born, December 3, 1753, at 
Firwood near Bolton-le-Moors, in Lancashire. He 
learned the trade of cotton spinner, working at it as 
an apprentice in his early youth, and though at that 
time but a lad of some fourteen years of age, he may 
have known concerning the experiments of Ark- 



24 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

Wright, then residing in the same town, He was cer- 
tainly of an inquiring and ingenious turn of mind, 
and when hut twenty-two years of age began the con- 
struction of a machine which he completed in 1779, 
and to which, as it was a cross between the Spinning 
Machine and the Spinning Jenny, partaking of the 
peculiar features of both, he gave the name of the 
'' Mule," a name still applied to machines embodying 
the same general principles. The expense of obtain- 
ing a patent was too great for his limited means. He 
made the peculiarities of its construction known to 
a few manufacturers for a small sum of mone)^ from 
each of them, realizing in all some £60. His chief 
remuneration came to him, when he was nearly sixty 
years of age, in a grant from Parliament, in 18 12, of 
^5,000, a worthy recognition of one of the most valu- 
able inventions, pertaining to textile industries, ever 
made. This machine, being even better adapted to 
the manufacture of soft yarns, and especially those of 
the finest numbers, than the Spinning Jenny, sup- 
planted that machine for making weft or filling yarns, 
wherever itw^as introduced. Its introduction in Great 
Britain, was very gradual, and its use was confined 
for some years chiefly to Lancashire ; and, even ten 
years after its completion, when Samuel Slater left his 
native land, he does not appear to have had any 



tHE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 2^ 

knowledge of it, and it was not introduced into this 
country, so far as we have found any record, until 
about 1802, in which year James Beaumont, who had 
come to this country from England two years before, 
erected a cotton-mill in Canton, Mass., and set up in 
it a mule of one hundred and forty-four spindles. 

In 1775 Messrs. Arkwright and Strutt, Samuel 
Need having rel^jred from the firm, erected a large 
mill at Belper, in Derbyshire about midway between 
Cromford and Derby, about seven miles north of the 
latter place. Belper is on the river Derwent, which 
affords an ample supply of water-power. They soon 
afterwards erected another large mill at Milford, about 
two miles south of Belper. They operated these mills 
with that at Cromford as their joint property until 
1 78 1, in which year they dissolved their partnership, 
Richard Arkwright retaining the mill at Cr9mford, 
and Jedediah Strutt retaining those at Belper and 
Milford. In the latter mill was employed in his 
youth he, whose successful introduction into this 
country of the Arkwright System of cotton machinery, 
and his relation to the development of the industry 
under this new impulse, gave to him, worthily, the 
appellation of The Father of the American Cot- 
ton Manufacture. 

Samuel Slater was born in Belper, Derbyshire, 



26 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

June 9, 1/68. He was the. son of William Slater, a 
respectable yeoman, owning the estate known as 
" Holly House." The yeomanry of England form a 
distinct class, between the gentry and the peasants, 
farming their own lands, usually possessing a 
pecuniary competence, occupying a middle position, 
removed on the one hand from all that is degrading 
and paralyzing in unmitigated poverty, and on the other 
hand, from the pride which is often associated with 
large wealth, .either inherited or rapidly acquired. 
The lad Samuel had the advantage of a good educa- 
tion in the common English branches, being a favorite 
pupil of his master, Thomas Jackson, and especially 
adept in Arithmetic and other Mathematics, the 
knowledge of which was of great value to him in his 
future career as a manufacturer, and especially in the 
mechanical construction to which the early years of 
his residence in this country were largely devoted. 
The excellence of his penmanship may be observed in 
his autograph, such as it was when he had been for 
many years in active business, and in which there is a 
striking resemblance to the signature to his indenture 
as an apprentice, made in his fifteenth year, and still 
preserved in the family. 

On the 8th of January, 1783, he was apprenticed to 
Jedediah Strutt, and entered his employment in the 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 2/ 

cotton mill at Milford. Before the death of William 
Slater, which occurred in 1782, Mr. Strutt had applied 
for the services of one of his sons, as an apprentice, to 
learn the business of cotton manufacturing, expressing 
a preference for the eldest son. Mr. Slater suggested 
that his second son, Samuel, would be better adapted 
to the position, observing that '' he not only wrote 
well and was good at figures, but was also of a 
decided mechanical genius." He had given marked 
indications of this genius, being '' his mother's best 
boy to wind worsted," and, to facilitate this work, had 
made for himself a polished steel spindle. The design 
of Mr. Strutt was not immediately carried out ; but, 
a few months later, was accomplished by the engage- 
ment of the lad Samuel as his apprentice. 

In his apprenticeship, young Slater manifested so 
much industry, fidelit3^ and mechanical skill, that he 
became a favorite of his master, and after some three 
years, though so young, was appointed an overseer, 
a position which gave him an experience afterwards 
of much value to him. During this time his mind 
was active in reference to his own establishment in 
business, when the proper period for it should arrive. 
Apprehending that the cotton manufacture in his 
native land would be overdone, and believing, in view 
of what he could learn of the condition and prospects 



j8 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

of the cotton manufacture in America, that there 
would be, in that country, a wide field for enterprise, 
one in w^hich his knowledge and experience would be 
important elements of success, and having seen, in an 
English newspaper, a reference to the inducements 
held out by the Legislatures of Pennsylvania and 
other states to encourage the introduction of im- 
proved machines for the cotton manufacture, he de- 
termined to emigrate to America. He knew that 
there was great jealousy in England of the efforts of 
the infant republic to render itself as independent of 
the mother country in its industrial and commercial 
relations, as it had become in civil affairs, and ^hat 
stringent laws had been passed against the emigration 
of skilled mechanics and against taking, or sending, 
out of the country models, patterns, or drawings of 
machinery. He therefore determined to perfect him- 
self in the knowledge of the machinery, and then to 
depend on his memory and mathematical and me- 
chanical skill, for constructing in America the dif- 
ferent machines pertaining to the Arkwright system. 
Having made the necessary preparation, and disguis- 
ing himself as a farm-laborer, without divulging his 
intentions even to his mother, he left home and went 
to London, from which city he proposed to take 
passage for New York. While waiting there for the 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 29 

sailing of the vessel, he wrote to his friends, that they 
might be relieved from the anxiety which must have 
been caused by his sudden departure from home with- 
out their knowledge. 

The date of his departure from London was Sep- 
tember I, 1789, and he landed in New York, after a 
tedious voyage of sixty-six days, early in the month 
of November. Within four days after landing he 
obtained employment from the New York Manufac- 
turing Society, which had been organized early in 
that year, and had established a cotton factory in 
Vesey Street, New York City. After some three 
weeks of engagement with this company, he became 
satisfied that it had little prospect of success, both 
from the character of the machinery and the want of 
water-power anywhere in the vicinity of the factory. 
Becoming acquainted at this time with the captain of 
a sloop, trading between Providence and New York, 
he w^as informed of the experiments made in that part 
of North Providence know n as Pawtucket, in manufac- 
turing cotton yarns by water-powder. At once, on the 
2d of December, 1 789, he addressed a letter to Moses 
Brown, the wx*althy retired merchant of Providence, . 
who furnished the capital for these experiments, offer- 
ing his services as a manager of cotton-spinning. 

A brief sketch of him, w^hose ample pecuniary 



30 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

resources and characteristics of mind and heart, 
equally perhaps with his wealth, fitted him for his 
relation, as the patron of the young English manufac- 
turer, to the ultimate success of their united work, 
will be pertinent to this record. 

Moses Brown w^as descended, m the fifth genera- 
tion, from Rev. Chad Brown, the confidential friend of 
Roger Williams, and the first settled pastor of the 
First Baptist Church in Providence. He was born, 
September 23, 1738, in Providence, being the youngest 
son of James Brown who, with his younger brother 
Obadiah, established the mercantile business in Provi- 
dence, which under their management was successful, 
making them wealthy merchants, but was afterwards 
developed to a much greater extent by the enterprise 
and judicious administration of the sons of Jam^es 
Brown, Nicholas, Joseph, John, and Moses, known as 
the " Four Brothers," who became, not only by much 
the leading mercantile house of Providence, but one 
of the foremost of New England. 

Left an orphan by the death of his father, he 
became a member of the family of his uncle Obadiah, 
whose daughter, Anna, he married when he was 
twenty-five years of age, and about the same time 
entered, as a partner, the firm which, after the death 
of the original partners, became Nicholas Brown & 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 3 1 

Company. He continued in active relation to it only 
about ten years. With his own share of the profits 
of the business for that period and the estate inherited 
from his wife's father, he had an ample fortune, and 
his health at the time being impaired, he retired from 
active business, making his residence, as he had done 
some two years previously, for the rest of his life, a 
period of some sixty-three years, on his extensive 
estate, then quite out of town, on the banks of the 
Seekonk River, but now included in the city, the 
entrance to his grounds being on a road which is now 
Angell Street, at the point where the late Estus Lamb 
erected the mansion, occupied by him several years 
before his death, 

Moses Brown was educated, as were all his 
brothers, in the tenets of the Baptist denomination, 
of which his ancestors had been dexoted and useful 
members from the early settlement of Providence and 
the organization of its first church, and accepted them 
as his own religious views. About the time of his 
retirement from business, when thirty-five years of 
age, he became a conscientious believer in the doc- 
trines and usages of the Society of Friends. He was 
afterwards a devoted member of the Society, and sus- 
tained its principal offices with dignity and usefulness, 
being especially reverenced in his old age by the 



y2 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

numerous Friends of Rhode Island, and the adjacent 
parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut, as the Pa- 
triarch of the Society, and greatly respected and 
beloved for his man}- Christian virtues by the mem- 
bers of all religious denominations who knew him. 
He founded the Friends' Boarding School of Provi- 
dence, giving to that institution its extensive grounds 
and a considerable pecuniary endowment at the 
beginning, which was largely supplemented by the 
provisions of the will of his son, Obadiah. Though 
always of a feeble constitution, he lived to extreme 
old age, dying in his ninety-eighth year, September 
6, 1836. 

Like many men of large w^ealth and patriotic im- 
pulses, in different states in the decade succeeding the 
achievement of the National Independence, Moses 
Brown was impressed with the importance of the 
establishm.ent of domestic manufactures. 

The circumstances w^hich led to this investment of 
capital, followed, nearly a year later, by the employ- 
ment of Samuel Slater, resulting in the successful 
introduction of the Arkwright system of cotton ma- 
chinery into this country, as stated, many years later 
by William Anthony, the Resident Agent of the 
Coventry Manufacturing Company for forty years 
from its organization in 1805, were these. ''About 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 33 

the year 1788, Daniel Anthony, Andrew Dexter and 
Lewis Peck, all of Providence, entered into an agree- 
ment to make what was then called homespun -cloth. 
The idea, at first, was to spin by hand, and to make 
jeans with linen warp and cotton filling, but, hearing 
that Mr. Orr, of Bridgewater, Mass. had imported 
some models of machinery from England for the pur- 
pose of spinning cotton, it was agreed that Daniel 
Anthony should go to Bridgewater and get a draft of 
the model of said machine. He, in company with 
John Reynolds, of East Greenwich, who had been 
doing something in the manufacturing of wool, went 
to Bridgewater, and found a model of the machine 
spoken of in possession of Mr. Orr, but not in opera- 
tion. This model of the machine was very imperfect, 
and was said to be taken from one of the first built in 
England. A draft of this machine was accordingly 
taken and laid aside for awhile. They then proceeded 
to build a machine of a different construction, called a 
Jenny. I understood that a model of this machine 
was brought from England into Beverly, Mass., by a 
man by the name of Summers. This Jenny had 
twenty-eight spindles. It was first set up in a private 
house, and afterwards removed to the Market-house 
at Providence, and operated there. Joshua Lindly, of 
Providence, was then engaged to build a carding 



34 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

machine for cardino- the cotton, agreeably to the draft 
presented, obtained also from Beverly. This machine 
was something similar to the one now used for card- 
ing wool, the cotton being taken off the machine in 
rolls and roped by hand. After some delay, this 
machine was finished. They then proceeded to build 
a spinning-frame after the draft obtained at Bridge- 
water. This machine was something similar to the 
water-frame, now in use, but very imperfect. It con- 
sisted of four heads, of eight spindles each, being 
thirty-two spindles in all, and was operated by a 
crank turned by hand. The spinning-frame, after 
being tried some time in Providence, was carried to 
Pawtucket and attached to a wheel propelled by 
water. The work of turning the machine was too 
laborious to be done by hand, and the machine was 
too imperfect to be turned by water. Soon after this, 
the machine was sold to Mr. Moses Brown, of Provi- 
dence, but, as all the carding and roping was done by 
hand, it was very imperfect, and but little could be 
done." 

It may be proper to state here that the trial of the 
spinning-frame, just referred to, was the first experi- 
ment in this country with spinning-machinery pur- 
porting to be of the Arkwright system. The 
machines, used in the American Manufactory at Phil- 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 35 

adelphia, and in the factories at Beverly, Worcester, 
New York and Baltimore, were, without doubt. Spin- 
ning Jennies, while the State Models at Bridgewater, 
built by the brothers Barr, though very imperfect, 
were intended to be, and supposed to have been, built 
according to the Arkwright pattern. 

At the same time with that of the experiment with 
the spinning machinery in the chamber of the Market- 
house, in Providence, two weavers, Joseph Alexander 
and James McKerries, came from Scotland to Provi- 
dence. They claimed to understand the use of the 
fly-shuttle. McKerries went to East Greenwich, 
while Alexander remained in Providence, and under 
his direction a loom was built for making corduroy. 
It was set up, also, in the chamber of the Market- 
house, and was operated with success so far as the 
weaving was concerned, but neither Alexander nor 
any one else in Providence knew how to cut the cor- 
duroy, to raise the pile forming the rib, and to give it 
the proper finish, so that, after a single piece had been 
made, the manufacture was abandoned, and Alexander 
removed to Philadelphia. 

Some other facts concerning the investment of cap- 
ital by Moses Brown were given in a letter from that 
gentleman, October 15, 1791, to John Dexter, from 
which we quote as follows. ^^ In the spring of 1789, 



36 SAMUEL SLATER ANt) 

sonic persons in Providence had procured to be made 
a carding-machine, a jenny and a spinning-frame, to 
work by hand, after the manner of Arkvvright's inven- 
tion, taken principally from models belonging to the 
State of Massachusetts, which were made at their ex- 
pense by two persons from Scotland, who took their 
ideas from observation and not from experience in 
the business. These machines, made here, not an- 
swering the purpose of the proprietors, and I, being 
desirous of perfecting them, if possible, and the busi- 
ness of the cotton manufacture, so as to be useful to 
the country, I purchased them, and, by great altera- 
tions, the carding-machine and jenny were made to 
answ^er. The frames, with one other, on nearly the 
saitie construction, made from the same model, and 
tried without success at East Greenwich, which I also 
purchased, I attempted to set to work by w^ater, and 
made a little yarn, so as to answer for warps; but, 
being so imperfect both as to the quality and quantity 
of the yarn, their use was suspended until I could 
procure a person who had wrought, or seen them 
wrought, in Europe." 

The following notice of the above experiments is 
contained in the Providence Gazette and Country 
JoiLvnal of August 8, 1789, ''A correspondent ob- 
serves : — ' There never was such a spirit of Industry 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 37 

and Zeal, to promote Manufactures in this Town and 
vicinity, as at present prevail. Almost every Family 
seems more or less engaged in this way. There are 
now also at work a carding-machine with a three-foot 
cylinder, two spinning-jennies of 60 spindles each, 
arid one of 38 spindles, and a mill after Arkwright's 
construction, which carries 32 spindles by water, from 
w^hich machines, as well as large quantities spun by 
hand, Corduroys, Jeans, Fustians, Denims, &c., &c., 
are making. There are several other Jennies erecting 
for the cotton as well as carding and other machines 
for the Wool Manufactory, among which the Wool 
Picker and Flying Shuttle are improvements every 
raiser of Sheep and Manufacturing Family should 
possess.' " The word *' Manufactory " in the above 
extract is used in a sense, now obsolete but common 
at that period, as equivalent to " manufacture." 

The allusion to the products of these machines, as 
" Corduroys, etc.," doubtless refers to the business of 
Almy & Brown, who, with capital furnished by Moses 
Brown, were then engaged in the manufacture and 
sale of these fabrics. Concerning this business and 
its condition there is a reference in the letter, just 
quoted from Moses Brow^n to John Dexter : — " We 
had in 1789 got several jennies and some weavers at 
work on linen warps, but have not been able to get 



38 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

cotton warps to a useful degree of perfection on the 
jennies, and although I had found the undertaking 
much more arduous than I expected, both as to the 
attention necessary and the expense, being necessi- 
tated to employ workmen of the most transient kind 
and on whom little dependence could be placed. 
During this time linen warps were wove and the 
jenny was performed in different cellars of dwelling- 
houses." 

The purchase of the machinery by Moses Brown 
was made ?^Iay 18, 1790. Whether the firm of Almy 
& Brown had been previously engaged in business we 
are not informed. The first entry of cloth, made as 
just stated, was dated June 1 1, 1789. and, between that 
date and January i, 1791, when the new machinery, 
built under the direction of Samuel Slater, had been 
in regular operation less than a fortnight, four thou- 
sand, five hundred and fifty-six yards of different 
fabrics, including Corduroys, Royal-ribs, Denims, 
Cottonetts, Jeans and Fustians, had been made. 

Moses Brown, having received the letter from 
Samuel Slater, replied under date of December 10. 
1789, in a letter, from which we quote : — " I, or 
rather Almy and Browm, who have the business in 
the cotton line, want the assistance of a person skilled 
in the frame or water-spinning. An experiment has 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 39 

been made which has failed, no person being ac- 
quainted with the business, and the frames imper- 
fect. As the frame we have made is the first attempt 
of the kind that has been made in America, it is too 
imperfect to afford much encouragement. We hardly 
know what to say to thee ; but, if thou thought thou 
could'st perfect and conduct them to profit, if thou 
wilt come and do it, thou shalt have all the profits 
made of them, over and above the interest of the 
money they cost and the wear aoid tear of them. We 
will find stock and be repaid in yarn, as we may agree 
for six months, and this we do for the information 
thou canst give, if fully acquainted with the business. 
If thy present situation does not come up to what 
thou wishest, and from thy knowledge can be ascer- 
tained of the advantages of the mills so as to induce 
thee to come and work ours, and have the credit as 
well as the advantage of perfecting the first water-mill 
in America, we should be glad to engage thy care, so 
long as ihey can be made profitable to both, and we 
can agree." 

Having received these letters, l\Ir. Slater decided to 
accept the proposal of ]\Ioses Brown, and went to 
Providence, where he arrived about January i, 1790. 
Going thence to Pawtucket and examining the ma- 
chines, he was satisfied that they w^ould be of little, if 



40 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

an\', wiluc, and declined the attempt to improve them, 
pio[H\sin^ to make new ones, with the use of such 
parts of the old ones as would be available. The con- 
struction of new machines was commenced at once, 
and in this work Mr. Slater developed in the first 
three months such competency for the work which he 
had undertaken, and so good prospect of ultimate 
success, that it was proposed that he should enter into 
partnership with Messrs. Almy and Brown. On the 
5th of April, 1790, a contract betw^een William 
Almy and Smith Brown, on one part, and Samuel 
Slater on the other part, was signed, by the terms of 
which the former gentlemen were to furnish capital 
and materials for the construction of two carding 
machines, a drawing and roving frame, and spinning- 
frame to the capacity of one hundred spindles, and 
capital for the conduct of the manufacture after the 
completion of the machines, and, as compensation for 
his knowledge and services, the latter was to receive 
one-half of the profits of the business and to be the 
owner of one-half of the machinery. Messrs. Almy & 
Brown were also to have a commission of two and a 
half per cent, for the purchase of stock and four per 
cent, for selling yarn and Mr. Slater was to be charged 
one-half of the expense incurred in the purchase and 
construction of the machines, old and new, and for 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 4 1 

the amounts advanced for his support while develop- 
in i^ and prosecuting the business. The style of the 
firm, formed under this contract, was Almy, Brown & 
Slater. 

The senior partner, William Almy, was the son-in- 
law of Moses Brown, having married his only daugh- 
ter, Sarah. He was born in Providence, February 
17, 1 76 1, and resided during his whole life in that 
town, becoming one of its leading merchants and 
most respected citizens, and was of the same religious 
faith as his father-in-law, being a worthy and devout 
member of the Society of Friends. He died in Provi- 
dence, February 5, 1836. 

Smith Brown, the second member of the firm at the 
becrinnincT was a cousin of Moses Brown, his father, 
Elisha Brown, being the tenth child and se\'enth son, 
while James, father of Moses Brown, was the second 
child and second son of James, grandson of Re\'. 
Chad Brown. Smith Brown was born in Providence, 
April 12, 1756. He continued in the firm of Almy, 
Brown & Slater but a short time, probably about two 
}-ears from its organization, when he retired from busi- 
ness and removed to Pembroke, ]\Iass,, where he had 
married Lydia Gould, and resided on a farm there till 
his death, June 16, 1 813. 

Though the work of ]\Ir. Slater in the first three 



[2 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

nuMiths was so satisfactory to his employers as to 
induce thcni to offer these advantageous terms of 
partnership, there was much discouragement and 
dela)', the result of the necessity of his depending on 
his own mechanical skill, aided only by his memory, 
w^ithout plan or model, for the construction of the 
various and complicated machines. This was true 
especially of the carding-machine. To obtain the 
card-clothing he visited the town of Leicester, Mass., 
w^here Pliny Earle, a member of the Society of 
Friends, manufactured hand-cards. 

The cards were made by Friend Earle and sent to 
Pawtucket, where they were affixed to the cylinders of 
the newly constructed machine. The first attempt to 
card cotton by the machine was a complete failure, 
and Mr. Slater was very much perplexed, and filled 
with anxiety lest they whom he had induced to invest 
capital in the machine should regard him as a de- 
ceiver, assuming to know, and to be able to do, more 
than was in his knowledge and ability. On a close 
examination, he saw that the teeth of the card had 
not the right pitch or inclination, and that the teeth 
were loose in the leather. Another journey to 
Leicester was necessary, and Pliny Earle came with 
Mr. Slater on his return to Pawtucket, and carefully 
going over the machine and re-adjusting the teeth, 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 43 

remedied the difficulty so ^that, to Mr. Slater's relief 
and the great satisfaction of his partners, the machine 
did its work effectively. Two other statements of the 
solution of this difficulty have been made: One that 
after having labored day after day to discover the de- 
fect that he might remedy it, the difficulty was re- 
vealed to him in a dream and that on going the next 
day to his work, he was able at once to apply the 
effective remedy. The other is that one of his 
assistants, a most skillful and ingenious mechanic, 
Sylvanus Brown, the father of the late James S. 
Brown, of Pawtucket, discovered the defect and sug- 
gested the remedy. Both of these statements were 
very positively declared to be erroneous by the late 
H. Nelson Slater, son of Samuel Slater, in a conversa- 
tion with the writer, and the above account of the 
matter was given by him as the correct one. 

The new machines were set up, as those purchased 
by Moses Brown in May, 1780, had been, in the full- 
ing mill of Ezekiel Carpenter, w^iich then stood near 
the west end, and south of, Pawtucket bridge. This 
mill was on what was known as '* The Old Forge 
Lot." 

We have not precise information when the ma- 
diinery was in such condition as to produce cotton 
yarns, satisfactory to Mr. Slater and his patron and 



44 SAMUKL SLATER AND 

partners. There are reasons for believing that the 
first \'arn aetually prodiieed on tlie Arkwright system 
of niachiner}' under the supervision of Mr. Slater, was 
made at least as early as the beginning of October, 
1790, so tL.:t one hundred years will have passed 
away at the time when the Centenary of the introduc- 
tion of the Arkwright system of cotton machinery 
into the United States shall be celebrated. This is 
the opinion expressed in a recent letter, addressed to 
the writer by the veteran cotton manufacturer, Moses 
Pierce, with the belief that he has in his possession 
proofs of the fact, though, being absent from home 
when the letter was written, he could not then look 
for or present them. There is hardly any doubt 
that, with the changes and adjustments which vv^ould 
be needed in a complete set of cotton miachinery in- 
cluding the carding-machine and the drawing and 
roving, as well as spinning frames, after success had 
been practically attained, some two or three months 
would pass away before the regular work of the 
factory could commence, with the employment of 
operatives and the keeping of their time, day after 
day. The first record of the latter kind commences 
with Monday^ December 20, 1790, and gives the 
names of four ]ads,Turpin and Charles Arnold, Smith 
Wilkinson, and Jabez Jenks, who were employed for 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 45 

the full ensiiin<^ week. On the next Monday, Decem- 
ber 27, Eunice Arnold, on Wednesday of the same 
week, Otis Barrows, and on Thursday, John and Syl- 
vanus Jenks, commenced work. On the followiiv^ 
Monday January 3, the name of Ann Arnold was 
placed on the list, and during that week the operati\'es 
were nine, sev^en boys and two girls, working the full 
time of six days. That they were all children, from 
seven to twelve years of age, we have the testimon)- of 
Smith Wilkinson, in a letter written under the date 
of May 30, 1835, from Pomfret, Conn., where he was 
then,. and had been since 1806, engaged in the cotton 
manufacture. He states that he was in his tenth 
year when he commenced working for Almy, Brown 
& Slater, and that he '' began by tending the breaker." 
We have not been able to ascertain, precisely, when 
the first change in the personnel of the firm was made 
As Obadiah, only son of Moses Brown attained his 
majority, July 15, 1792, it is probable that he then, or 
soon afterwards, took the place of Smith Brown in the 
firm, the style of which was not changed. Obadiah 
Brown continued in active relation to the business till 
his death, October 15, 1822. He was a merchant of 
much ability and enterprise, and a highly respected 
and influential member of the Society of Friends 
and a munificent patron of the Friends' Boarding 



46 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

School, cspcciall)^ providing in his will for its en- 
dowment. 

Tlie success of the enterprise was such that, very 
soon, cotton )'arns were produced, equal in quality to 
those of the same grade made in Great Britain, and 
the indications of a profitable business encouraged the 
decision on the part of the firm to erect a mill, especi- 
ally adapted to cotton spinning. For this purpose a 
mill-privilege on the Seekonk or Blackstone River, 
some twenty rods above the Pawtucket Bridge and 
the fulling mill previously occupied by their ma- 
chinery, was purchased, on the I2th of November, 
1 79 1. Early in 1793, the erection of a factory was 
commenced. It was originally forty feet long, twenty- 
six feet wide, and tw^o stories high, with an attic avail- 
able for some purposes of the business. The building 
still stands, though much enlarged by additions made 
at different times. The first was made within a few 
years after the erection of the mill, increasing the 
length of the building by fifty feet eastward to the 
river, with the same width and height and conforma- 
tion of roof as in the part previously built. This 
extension is still preserved in its original form. An 
addition, westward, precisely similar in dimensions 
and style to that just referred to, was made by Almy 
Brow^n & Slater, the v/hole length of the building 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 47 

being, then, one hundred and forty feet, the width of 
twenty-six feet and the height of two stories and attic 
being preserved. The present mill, as seen from the 
street, though styled the '' Old Slater Mill," does not 
convey an idea at all correct, of the mill as it was 
when Samuel Slater was one of its owners. A very 
accurate idea of its original appearance can be gained 
by viewing that part of the present mill next to the 
river, the original height and width of which, and the 
form of its roof, have been preserved. The original 
mill was built at the expense of, and was owned by, 
Almy, Brown & Slater, the interest in the mill 
privilege remaining the property of Moses Brown till 
i8oi. On the 21st of July of that year Moses Brown 
conveyed to William Almy and Obadiah Brown, '' for 
love and affection " two-thirds, and to Samuel Slater, 
for a price, one-third of his interest of three-eighths 
of the mill-privilege, Thomas Arnold and Oziel Wil- 
kinson each retaining his interest. 

On going to Pawtucket, Mr. Slater found a home 
in the family of Oziel Wilkinson, a member of the 
Society of Friends, and a mechanic of much skill and 
enterprise, who had been engaged at Pawtucket, from 
his early manhood, in various important enterprises 
connected w^ith iron-work. One of his daughters, 
Hannah, became the devoted wife and very efficient 



48 SAMIKL SLATKK AND 

hclp-matc of Samuel Slater and^the mother of his ten 
children, of whom six sons attained manhood, three of 
them succeeding their father in the active business 
of manufacturing. 

It is a fact, worthy of record in this history, that to 
?^Irs. Slater was due the first suggestion of making, 
from the cotton fiber, thread for sewing, as a substi- 
tute for the linen thread, which had been previously 
in general use for most of the purposes to which cot- 
ton thread is now applied. Her husband, one day, in 
1793, showed her some remarkably smooth and even 
yarn, which had been spun in his factory from Suri- 
nam cotton, which, in the length of its staple, and the 
general character of its fiber, w^as very similar to the 
Sea Island cotton of a later period. It occurred to 
her that it would make good sewing thread, and, with 
the aid of her sister, she twisted some of it on an 
ordinary spinning wheel, making No. 20 two-ply 
thread. On testing it with linen thread in making 
seams, the cotton thread proved to be the stronger. 
This, so far as there is record, w^as the first use of cot- 
ton for the purpose, and was the beginning of the 
manufacture of cotton thread, which, both in Europe 
and America, has become a very important and exten- 
sive industry. 

Is was somewhat difficult, at the becrinnincr of the 



THE COTtON MANUFACTURE. 49 

cotton manufacture at Pavvtucket, to obtain operatives, 
and many employes were children whose parents 
were very poor, and who had had but small opportu- 
nities for even an elementary education. As a remedy 
for this deficiency, Mr. Slater, in 1793, established a 
Sunday School in his own house, and at first taught 
the children himself, and afterwards employed, with a 
suitable compensation, students from Rhode Island 
College, now Brown University, to do the work, his 
wise benevolence finding therein a double scope, in 
the pecuniary aid afforded worthy young men, pursu- 
ing collegiate studies, as well as in the primary object, 
the mental and moral improvement of the children and 
youth employed by him. It is believed that this was 
the first Sunday School established in New England, 
its principal object being somewhat different from 
Sunday Schools in general at the present day, but 
precisely the same as that of the first Sunday School, 
established by Robert Raikes. 

The business of Almy, Brown & Slater was, at first 
and for many years, that of cotton-spinning, the 
yarns, made by them, being sold in the vicinity of 
the factory ; but, after a few years, in consequence of 
the establishment of several similar factories in Rhode 
Island and the contiguous states, it was found neces- 
sary to seek a market at a greater distance, and adver- 



50 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

tiscnicnts slun\ that, in the first two decades of this 
century, aq^encies were estabHshed in different places 
from Portsmouth to Baltimore, by Almy & Brown, 
the sellinp' of the products of the mill being in the 
hands of that firm with their office and store in Prov- 
idence, while the manufacturing was carried on by 
Almy, Brown & Slater, in the village of Pawtucket, 
in North Providence. 

The success of Samuel Slater in his enterprise eit 
Pawtucket was due, in part, doubtless, to the superior 
machinery, constructed there under his direction, and 
to his remarkable ability, both as a mechanic, trained 
under the eye and with the especial personal interest 
in him of Jedediah Strutt, the foremost cotton manu- 
facturer of that period in Great Britain, and as a man 
of general business capacity, w^hich made him a mer- 
chant and large capitalist, able to devise and carry 
forward enterprises of large scope and exceptional 
success. It was due, also, largely to the fact that he 
did not, at the first, and for many years, attempt to 
compete with foreign manufacturers in making fabrics 
of any kind, but, as a ''spinner," to supply yarns for 
domestic use, to be w^oven in the homes of the people 
into such fabrics as might be needed in the families of 
the region w^hich could be easily supplied from the 
factory. In speaking of Samuel Slater as a ''spinner," 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 5 I 

the distinction must be remembered, very marked at 
that time, and considerably so even at the present 
time, in Great Britain, between the persons who made 
yarns, always known as " spinners," and " manufac- 
turers," who, purchasing yarns from the spinners or 
their agents, made them into fabrics of various kinds 
and styles. Persons, engaged in spinning yarns and 
selling them in the skein or waip, have never been 
known as " manufacturers " in Great Britain. Samuel 
Slater, it is well known, was averse, for some years 
after the successful use of power-looms by others, to 
their introduction in any of the mills in which he had 
an interest, preferring to remain, what he had been 
from the days of his apprenticeship, a '' spinner." He, 
however, in later years, became a ''manufacturer " in 
the largest sense of that term, and the recognized 
head of the cotton industry in the large section of 
country including Rhode Island, Eastern Connecticut, 
and South-eastern Massachusetts, where the establish- 
ment of cotton mills had been due to his example and 
succes^\ 

The second cotton mill, started within the present 
limits of Pawtucket, though its site was in the town 
of Rehoboth, Mass., at the time of its erection, was 
a personal enterprise, at the beginning, of Samuel 
Slater, 



3 J SAMl'KL SLATER AND 

On the iith of November, 1797, David Kennedy 
sold to Moses Brown, Thomas Arnold, Oziel Wilkin- 
son and Samuel Slater the land in Rehoboth at the 
eastern end of the dam, which made the privilege 
from which the cotton mill of Almy, Brown & Slater 
received its power, together w^ith his interest in the 
dam and right to one-half the water of the river. The 
object of this purchase by Moses Brown and his 
associates was that they might obtain the entire con- 
trol of the water-power at that point. Samuel Slater 
by this conveyance became the owner of one-third of 
David Kennedy's interest, the other two-thirds being 
divided between Messrs. Brown, Arnold and Wilkin- 
son, in the same proportion \vith their interests on 
the opposite side of the river. Early in 1799 Mr. 
Slater decided to build a mill on these premises on his 
own individual account. It would seem that in this 
enterprise he acted independently of his partners, 
William Almy and Obahiah Browai, and without the 
assent of Moses Brown. It appears, according to the 
terms of the deed of David Kennedy, that the interest, 
conveyed to the grantees, was an undivided one, ren- 
dering the consent of all of them necessary in order 
that either one of them should use, for his separate 
and personal advantage or profit, even so much of the 
water-power as would be included in his share or 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 53 

intefest. This consent being refused by one or more 
of the parties in interest, Mr. Slater applied to the 
Court of Common Pleas for Bristol Count\% Mass., at 
its September term for 1799, for a partition of the 
land and mill-privilege. A jur\', having been ap- 
pointed, reported in favor of the application, making 
the partition, the report and partition being approved 
and confirmed at the December term of the court. 
Mr. Slater at once proceeded to complete and start 
his mill, the erection of which had commenced, it is 
believed, during the previous summer. 

On the 22d of Februar)% 1800, Oziel Wilkinson 
con\'eycd his interest of one-sixth of the land and 
privilege to Samuel Slater, making the latter the 
owner of one-half On the same date, ]\Ir. Slater con- 
veyed to Oziel Wilkinson one-fourth and to Timothy 
Greene and William Wilkinson, also sons-in-law of 
Oziel Wilkinson, one-eighth, each, of the factory and 
the real estate attached to it, and the business w^as 
carried on from that time under the style of Samuel 
Slater & Company. The factory was of wood, painted 
white, and therefore known as the ''White Mill." The 
partner-hip continued till January 30, 1 8 19, on which 
date Mr. Slater sold his entire interest of one-half,^ — 
to Timothy Greene one-eighth, to William Wilkinson 
one-sixteenth, to Abraham, Isaac, and David Wilkin- 



54 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

son one-twelfth, each, to William Harris one-sixteenth. 
The firm then took the style of Wilkinson, Greene & 
Company, there being no change till the death of the 
senior partner, October 22, 181 S, when his interest 
passed, in accordance with the provisions of his will, to 
his five sons, Abraham, Isaac, David, Daniel and 
Smith, the style of the firm continuing as before. The 
facilities of the business were increased in 181 3 by the 
erection of a mill, immediately adjoining, which, from 
the materials of which it was built, was known as the 
'' Stone Mill." 

In 1805 the second cotton mill in Rehoboth, on land 
now in the limits of Pawtucket, was erected. The 
persons engaged in this enterprise were Ebenezer 
Tyler, 2d, Eliphalet Slack, Oliver Starkw'eather, 
Nathaniel Croade, Benjamin S. Walcott, John Walcott 
and Elijah Ingraham. The mill, which, being of wood 
and painted yellowy w^as known for many years as the 
'' Yellow Mill," was finished and went into operation 
in the fall of 1805. Its business was remunerative so 
that in 18^3 its owners erected another mill, similar 
to that just above, the same year, by Wilkinson, 
Greene & Co., and, like it, built of stone. 

In the same year, 1805, another cotton mill 
was built at what was known as the '' Chocolate 
Mills," then w^ithin the limits of Smithfield. The mill. 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 55 

with privilege and land, both in Smithfield and Reho- 
both, had become before 1805 ^'^^ property of Stephen 
Jenks, who proposed to Benjamin S. VValcott and 
Elisha and Rufus Waterman, proprietors of a cotton 
mill in Cumberland, about two miles above on the 
Blackstone River, that they should join him in estab- 
lishing and equipping his mill with machinery for 
spinning cotton yarn. The proposal being accepted, 
he conveyed to each of them, August 8, 1805, ^^^ ^^" 
terest of one-fourth of the property, and entered into 
partnership with them under the style of the Smith- 
field Cotton Manufacturing Company. The business 
was conducted probably with success, certainly with- 
out change, for about seventeen years, a remarkable 
fact for that period. 

In the year, 1810, Oziel Wilkinson erected a 
mill on land between Mill Street and the river, 
immediately adjoining the mill-lot of Almy, Brown & 
Slater, on the south. This mill, w^hich was of stone 
and w^iich still stands, considerably enlarged from its 
original dimensions, was equipped with cotton ma- 
chinery, built for it by his son, Daniel Wilkinson, and 
his son-in-law, Hezekiah Howe. He operated it on 
his own account till April 11,1812, when he conveyed 
an interest of one-quarter to his son, David Wilkin- 
son, and of one-eighth, each, to his son Daniel and 



56 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

Hezckiah Howe, retaining for himself an interest of 
oae-half The firm thus organized took the style of 
O/iel Wilkinson &' Company. 

In the )^ear 1812a cotton mill wa;s erected in the 
old tan-yard of Timothy Greene, the mill being 
on the western bank of the river a short distance 
south of Pawtucket Bridge, its water-power being 
derived frt m Sargent's Trench, so-called, a canal 
wdiich was constructed for the purpose of utilizing to 
a greater degree the water-power, furnished by the 
dam at the bridge. The canal or trench started from 
the river just above the dam, passed under Main 
Street, and again entered the river at some distance 
below. We have found no record indicating whether 
the mill w^as built by Timothy Greene or by his sons, 
Samuel and Daniel. In either case the mill was 
operated for several years by the sons in partnership, 
under the style of Samuel and Daniel Greene. 

We have thus enumerated all the cotton mills, of 
which we have found any record, which were put in 
operation within the present limits of Pawtucket 
before the close of the war with Great Britain 18 12-15, 
bringing their record down to that time. These mills 
appear, all of them, to have been remunerative until 
that time. A principal cause of their prosperity, as 
of the numerous other cotton mills, started in Rhode 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 5/ 

Island and other states of New England in the first 
decade and the first half of the second decade of this 
cuitury, was the fact that between 1808 and 181 5, in 
consequence of the Embargo and the War, importa- 
tion of cotton yarns and fabrics almost wliolly ceased. 
When peace was declared and trade was resumed with 
Great Britain and other countries of Europe, there was 
an immediate and immense importation of cotton 
fabrics, as well as of other manufactured articles 
which had been accumulating for )'ears in foreign 
warehouses. 

The result was the complete prostration of the 
textile industries of the country, from which many of 
them never recovered. So complete was this, that in 
June, 1816, when Francis C. Low^ell and Nathan Ap- 
pleton, two gentlemen who had associated about two 
years before in the organization of the Boston Manu- 
facturing Company, of Waltham, Mass,, which held 
very much the same relation to the development of 
the cotton manufacture by Boston capital in Massa- 
chusetts, except that part contiguous to Rhode Island, 
and in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, that 
the enterprise of Almy, BrowTi & Slater, at Paw^tucket, 
did to the same interest in Rhode Island, South- 
eastern Massachusetts and Eastern Connecticut, vis- 
ited Pawtucket with a view to investigate the condi- 



58 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

tion there, and to eonsult with Mr. Shiter and other 
leading- Rliode Island manufacturers. Of this visit 
Mr. Appleton said, more than forty years afterward: — 
" We called on Mr. Wilkinson, the maker of ma- 
chinery. He took us into his establishment, a large 
one ; all was silent, not a wheel in motion, not a man 
to be seen. He informed us there w^as not a spindle 
running in Pawtucket, except a few in Slater's old 
mill, making yarns. All was dead and still." 

Tw^o things contributed, w^ithin less than a year 
from the date of that visit, to give a new impulse to 
the cotton manufacture and to start it on its course of 
prosperity and of beneficent results to the w^hole 
country, and especially to New England, interrupted 
only by brief seasons of financial revulsion which 
have affected all business interests. The first of these 
factors in the new^ order of things was the passage of 
the tariff of 1816. This was secured by the joint ef- 
forts of Francis C. Lowell and of a committee of the 
manufacturers of Rhode Island, of which Hon. James 
Burrill, Jr., afterwards Senator from Rhode Island, was 
chairman. It may seem strange that the passage of the 
bill was due principally to the able advocacy of Hon. 
William Lowndes and Hon. John C. Calhoun, Repre- 
sentatives from South Carolina, while strenuous 
opposition was made by Hon. Timothy Pickering 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 59 

and other leading Representatives and Senators from 
New England. The latter fact may be explained by 
the consideration that the capital of Boston and other 
principal centers of business and influence in New 
England was invested largely in foreign commerce, 
the cotton manufactories throughout New England, 
except the two to which we have alluded, that of 
Almy, Brown & Slater and the Boston Manufacturing 
Company, having been established with capital fur- 
nished by the united contributions, many of them 
small, of persons of limited means — farmers, me- 
chanics, tradesmen and, occasionally, professional 
men. The interests, therefore, of the capital of New 
England at that time was opposed to manufactures 
and in favor of the importation of fabrics from foreign 
countries. 

The second factor in the revival of the cotton man- 
ufacture was the introduction of the power-loom. 
Experiments were made, during the eighteenth cen- 
tury in England, Scotland and France, for \veaving by 
power, with little success. A patent was granted 
April 14, 1785, to Rev. Edward Cartwright for a 
power-loom, and other patents were granted him dur- 
ing the next three years, which seem to have cov- 
ered all the necessary movements for weaving by 
power, including the stop-motion for the shuttles and 



6o SAMUEL SLATER AND 

self-acting- temples. Patents for power-looms were 
granted to other persons in Great Britain within the 
next twenty \'ears, some of which actually went into 
operation, but were not adapted to supersede weaving 
b\' hand, probably not so much from any defect in the 
machines as from the want of a suitable preparation 
of the web. This made it necessary to stop the looms 
frequently to dress the warp, for which the service of 
one man for each loom was required, so that there 
was no saving of expense. This difficulty was not 
remedied till Radcliff and Ross, manufacturers in 
Stockport, brought out their dressing machine, 
patented February 28, 1803, and June 2, 1804, in the 
name of Thomas Johnson, one of their workmen, by 
w^hom it was invented. This machine having been 
perfected, a weaving mill, operated by steam-power, 
went into operation in Manchester in 1806, which year 
has been considered the date of the successful com- 
mencement of power-weaving. 

The power-loom, which came into general use in 
Great Britain and this country, was patented April 20, 
1801, by William Horrocks of Stockport, with im- 
provements, patented May 14,1805, and July 31, 1813. 
This loom and warp-dressing machine, were seen by 
Francis C. Lowell, while on a visit to Great Britain, 
in 1810-11, when he was permitted to go through 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 6 1 

one of the factories, a courtesy which would not have 
been extended to him had it been known or supposed 
that he had any object other than that of an ordinary 
tourist. Though a merchant, however, he had such 
mechanical aptitude that he was able to understand, 
and afterwards to use, those features of the machines 
which were needed for the successful construction, in 
1813-14, of the loom and dressing machine, which 
was put in operation at Waltham in the fall of 1814, 
the patent for the loom being granted February 23, 
1815. 

In September, 181 5, William Gilmour, a Scotch 
mechanic of much ingenuity and skill, arrived in 
Boston. He there became acquainted with Robert 
Rogerson, a commission merchant, who had been 
engaged for some years in making cotton yarns, in a 
small way, with machinery operated by a horse in the 
cellar of his store, and had purchased July 3, 1815, 
a cotton mill in Uxbridge, Mass. Mr. Rogerson was 
much interested in the statement of the young Scotch- 
man concerning the power-loom. His purchase at 
Uxbridge being so recent, he was not ready himself 
to try the experiment there of power weaving. He 
therefore invited the young man to go with him to 
Slatersville. The suggestion that the power-loom 
should be put in operation there was made to John 



62 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

Slater, who immediately approved of it, but was 
overruled by his older and more conservative brother, 
Samuel, who preferred to adhere closely to cotton 
spinning, and also considered it unwise to make any 
investment at that time, when the prospects of the 
cotton manufacture were so discouraging. Mr. Gil- 
mour, however, was furnished with employment in 
the machine shop of the factory at Slatersville. 
Early in the spring of i8i6 he determined to make 
another effort to introduce the power-loom, and went 
to the mill of the Lyman Cotton Manufacturing Com- 
pany, where he had an interview with Judge Daniel 
Lyman, its largest owner, who immediately con- 
tracted with him for the construction of twelve looms 
on the model of the Scotch loom. Though known at 
first in this country as the " Scotch Loom " it was 
the loom already spoken of as having been invented 
by William Horrocks, of Stockport, Eng., and was 
styled the Scotch Loom because it was introduced 
into this country from Scotland. 

The twelve looms, also a warp-mill and a dressing- 
machine, were immediately built at Lymansville, from 
drafts, made full size, by Mr. Gilmour on the floor of 
a vacant room in Mill, No. 2. There was some diffi- 
culty in starting the machines, which, however, was 
soon overcome and success was attained, the ma- 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 63 

chincry being in full operation early in 1817. Fully 
appreciating the advantages of the new machine, 
Judge Lyman was not disposed to any narrow policy 
concerning it, but permitted Mr. Gilmour, for what 
now seems a petty sum, — $10 — to give to David 
Wilkinson the right to build the machine, so that a 
new and extensive field of labor was opened before 
that ingenious and enterprising mechanic, and from 
his machine-shop in Pawtucket power-looms were 
furnished to numerous cotton mills in the vicinity and 
other parts of the country, changing them from mere 
spinning shops to manufactories of cotton cloth, and, 
in connection with the tariff of 1 8 16, enabling them to 
enter into profitable competition with the cotton fac- 
tories of Great Britain, and making a new era in the 
industry, hardly second in importance to that of the 
introduction of the Arkwright machinery into Paw- 
tucket, in 1790. 

Though the time and personal work of Samuel 
Slater, for more than twenty years after his arrival in 
Pawtucket, was confined to the two mills within the 
present limits of the city, his record would not be as 
complete as it is desirable to make it, even for the 
purposes of the present sketch, without some refer- 
ence to other industries in which he became interested 
during the subsequent twenty-five years, . 



64 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

When the first cotton factory, established by Samuel 
Slater, had been in successful operation some ten 
years, he desired the co-operation and assistance of 
his }^ounger brother, John, and invited him to come 
to this country. The latter arrived in Pawtucket in 
1803, and immediately entered into the employ of 
Almy, Brown & Slater. In 1805 it was decided by 
the firm to establish the cotton manufacture in some 
new location, and, to ascertain where a favorable site 
could be found, John Slater made several journeys on 
horse-back. In one of these journeys he went to the 
northern part of the town of Smithfield, R. I., then 
almost a wilderness, and discovered a stream, the 
Monhegan, now the Branch River, which had at one 
point a fall of some forty feet, with ponds above it 
forming natural reservoirs and promising an ample 
supply of water at all seasons of the year. This was 
the site of the future Slatersville. Three purchases 
of land were made, comprising in all more than one 
hundred and fifty acres, controlling the stream, and 
providing sites for mills, tenements, etc. A partner- 
ship was formed by William Almy, Obadiah Brcvvii, 
Samuel Slater and John Slater, under the st}'le of 
Almy, Brown & Slaters, and the erection of the first 
mill was commenced, the mill being completed late in 
1806 and going into operation early in 1807. 



th£ cotton manufacture. 65 

Samuel Slater retained his interest at Slatersville 
till his death with the exception of a period, less than 
three years. In 1829 he conveyed his interest to his 
partners, but purchased it again in 1832, at which 
time he with his brother John purchased the interests 
of his partners, and after that time the mills at Slaters- 
ville were operated by the firm of S. & J. Slater. On 
the 1 2th of August, 1829, the partnership of Almy, 
Brown & Slater, at Pawtucket, was dissolved, Mr. 
Slater selling his interest to his partners. 

In 181 1 the attention of Mr. Slater was directed to 
a locality in the southern portion of Worcester 
county, Mass., then very sparsely inhabited, but in 
which a lake having the Indian name of Chaubuna- 
gungamaug, would afford a large supply with a con- 
siderable fall of water. Visiting the locality he de- 
cided to locate a new cotton industry there, and made 
purchases of land sufficient to control the outlet of 
the lake and to furnish ample room for all the pur- 
poses of the industry. This was the commencement, 
made in 18 1 2, at what is now East Webster. This 
was followed by the erection in 1822 of a manufactory 
of woolen fabrics, which he carried on in partnership 
with Edward Howard, Mr. Slater becoming sole pro- 
prietor at the beginning of 1829. This manufactory 
was the germ of the present extensive mills of the 



66 SAMUEL SLATER AND 

Slater Wool Company, less than a mile north of the 
present eenter o{ Webster. In 1823 he purchased the 
cotton mill which had been erected in 18 1 5 by 
Braman, Benedict & Waters at what is now the 
North Village of Webster. The several villages which 
grew up around these mills, with some additional ter- 
ritory taken from the towns of Dudley and Oxford, 
w^ere, through Mr. Slater's influence, incorporated as 
a tow^n and named Webster, in honor of the great 
statesman, of whom he was an ardent admirer. 

In 1823, on the loth of July, Samuel Slater, in com- 
pany w^ith his brother John, purchased the cotton 
mills at Jew^ett City, Conn., which had been erected 
in 181 1 by nine persons, who organized themselves 
as a company under the style of the Jewett City Cot- 
ton Manufacturing Company. The comipany w^as re- 
organized in 181 3 as the Jewett City Manufacturing 
Company, an Act of Incorporation being granted to it 
by the Connecticut Legislature in 181 3. The enter- 
prise, from the date of its coming into the hands of 
the brothers Slater, was successful and remunerative. 
On the 23d of July, 1831, Samuel Slater conveyed 
his interest in the property to his brother John, who, 
from that time till his death, ow^ned and operated the 
mills. 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE.. 6/ 

111 May, 1826, Samuel Slater became the owner of 
one-half of the mills at Amoskeag Village in New 
Hampshire, the first of which had been erected in 
1809. The other one-half of the property was held 
by Larned Pitcher of Seekonk, Mass., and Ira Gay of 
Dunstable, N. H., both builders of cotton machinery, 
having come into their possession by the foreclosure 
of a mortgage in January, 1825. In December of 
that year Messrs. Slaters, Pitcher and Gay made con- 
veyances to Oliver Dean of Medway, Mass., Lyman 
Tiffany of Roxbury, Mass., and WilJard Sayles of 
Boston, Mass., by which the latter three gentlemen 
became owners of one-fifth, Mr. Slater retaining 
one-fifth, and Messrs. Pitcher and Gay, each one- 
tenth of the mills. The six gentlemen entered 
into partnership as the Amoskeag Manufactur- 
ing Company, by which firm the two mills were 
operated till July i, 183 1, when a charter was granted 
by the New Hampshire Legislature as a corporation 
under the same name, the partners conveying their 
several interests to the company, and receiving shares 
in proportion to their interests. Mr. Slater continued 
a stockholder in the company till his death. 

In 1830, Samuel Slater became proprietor of the 
Providence Steam Cotton Mill, which had been 
erected some years before, largely with capital fur- 



6s , SAMUEL SLATER AND 

nishcd by him, and of the mills in Wilkinsonville, 
Mass., which had been erected in 1823, by David 
Wilkinson, who became insolvent in 1829, being 
largely indebted to Mr. Slater. The interest of the 
latter in the mills at Wilkinsonville is still held by 
his heirs. 

W^e conclude this sketch with some personal char- 
acteristics of Samuel Slater, as given by those who 
knew him well while living. In person he was tall, 
full six feet, erect and well proportioned, his weight 
being about two hundred and sixty pounds. He was 
of light complexion, his countenance ruddy and 
healthful, his features regular, his forehead broad and 
high, his expression intellectual. The portrait wdiich 
accompanies this sketch was said by the son of Mr. 
Slater, the late H. Nelson Slater, to be very accurate 
and the only satisfactory one in existence, a statement 
confirmed by other relatives and intimate friends. His 
relations with his employes were always most pleasant 
and in their welfare he took a kindly and paternal in- 
terest. This extended to their personal, domestic 
and social relations, and to his care and efforts, ex- 
tending through forty years, was due largely the supe- 
rior relative condition of the manufacturing villages of 
Rhode Island and the adjoining districts in moral and 
social respects as compared with that of most manu- 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 69 

facturing- villages of Great Britain. With youtli and 
children he was especially genial and winning and 
secured their confidence and affection in a very high 
degree. An illustration of this was related to the 
writer by one \Yho has been, for many years, one of 
the largest and most successful manufacturers of 
machinery in New England, as well as of cotton 
goods. When he was a lad in Pawtucket, in passing 
by Mr. Slater's house he was more than once invited 
in, and for an hour or more Mr. Slater talked w^th 
him concerning mechanical matters and by diagrams 
taught him to draught various forms of mechanical 
device and adjustment, to which fact the gentleman, 
referred to, attributes largely the direction and bias 
which his mind early received, and under the influence 
of which he became the master-mechanic that, for 
three score years and more, he has been. 

Though, for more than tw^enty years after he came 
to this country, his business was very engrossing and 
his personal devotion of time to it was, according to 
his ow^n statement, not less, on an average, than six- 
teen hours a day, and he had, consequently, but little 
opportunity for study or reflection on matters not 
strictly connected with it, his native intellectual ability 
and early mental training fitted him both for ready 
acquisition of information, general and special, and for 



70 SAMUEL SLATER. 

digcstini^ therefrom sound and large views and princi- 
ples. While, therefore, in the sphere of his own per- 
sonal experience and work he was wise and skillful 
beyond most of his contemporaries, on other topics 
of interest and general importance, it is known that 
his ideas were broad, far-reaching, and philosophical. 
He retained his citizenship at Pawtucket till his 
death, but spent most of the time of his last years at 
the mansion which he had built at East Webster, and 
in which he died April 21, 1835: A plain shaft of 
Quincy granite marks his resting place in the burial 
. ground near the mansion, a fitting memorial, and 
most emblematic of the marked simplicity and solidity 
of his character. 

It will be seen from what we have written that 
Samuel Slater deserved, in an eminent degree, the 
place which he holds in the annals of New England, 
as one who, perhaps more than any other man, gave 
direction and impetus to the movement which, com- 
mencing immediately after the American Revolution, 
rendered the United States as independent of the 
mother country in its industrial relations as that con- 
flict had done in its civil relations, and made New 
England the workshop of the Western, as Old Eng-» 
land has long been of the Eastern Continent. 

RD-ie.6. 



